New York City employees fired for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine must be reinstated immediately and given back pay because the vaccine mandate is unconstitutional, a New York state judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Big Apple mandated in 2021 that all city employees must receive a COVID-19 vaccine, rejecting requests for religious exemptions, such as from pro-life employees who objected to the vaccine because stem cell lines from aborted children were used in the vaccines’ development.
New York City fired all of those employees, including firefighters, police officers, and other first responders who had served fearlessly during the worst stages of the pandemic. Many of these employees formerly hailed as heroes had also contracted the disease and recovered, and cited their natural immunity antibodies as another reason to allow them not to be vaccinated.
Justice Ralph Porzio of the New York Supreme Court in Staten Island held that these terminations are illegal. (The name is misleading, because in New York’s court system, the lowest level of general jurisdiction courts is called the supreme court. It is simply the county court that conducts trials.) Specifically, Porzio held that the mandate is unconstitutional — for several reasons.
